Your visit to the Louvre [antikvár]

THE LOUVRE, PALACE OF THE MUSES «It is a matter of making a Museum out of the galleries of the Louvre; it is decided and, as Interior Minister, I am the organiser and supervisor of the project. [ ] This Museum is to be an expansion of the great wealth which the nation possesses in drawings, paintings, sculptures and other monuments of art. As 1 conceive it, it should attract foreign visitors and focus their attention; it should nurture a taste for fine arts and serve as a school for artists; It should be open to everyone [ ]. This will be a national monument, there will be no-one not entitled to enjoy it.» In 1792, in the first year of the Republic, Roland thus laid down the principles of what would, on 27th July 1793, become the central Museum for the Arts. The Louvre of kings gave way to a museum destined for a brilliant future. A ROYAL HERITAGE Whilst it fell to the Revolution to have founded and organised a museum intended for all citizens, to fulfil this it was based on a design developed in the middle of the century and adopted in the reign of Louis XVI: in 1776, a commission had studied the project; making inventories, restoring, supplementing the royal collections through purchases, it had prepared the ground. When, on 10th August 1793, the Museum was opened in the square Drawing-room and the Long Gallery [Grande Galerie] which connects the Louvre to the national Palace - the former Tuileries - , what did it hold? From the Idngs, it inherited impressive sets of paintings, drawings and statuaries: the collection of paintings of François I, and those of Louis XIV or Louis XVI abound with accounts of the Italian Renaissance - Raphael or Leonardo and his Gioconda - , of works of artists from the XVII century, known as the Grand Siecle, of Flemish, Dutch and other masters. Created by Henri ly the «Antiques Room» was a treasury on which the museum would draw. Not to mention the riches of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Exciting the admiration of the world To this royal legacy, the I Republic, soon followed by the Consulate in 1799, added its contribution: it seized the property of émigrés and took possession of that of the Church - hence the regalia, instruments of the coronation of kings kept at the Abbey of Saint-Denis - and collected the booty of its armies that were scouring Belgium, Germany or Italy For the Louvre owed it to itself to be amongst the most magnificent. Symbol of the victory of the people over its tyrants, an example of the glory of France, «it will excite the admiration of the world», it was said. Then it was the turn of the empire to make its mark: a year even before his coronation, in 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte gave his name to the museum. The campaigns waged throughout Europe brought back numerous works to Paris: two architects, Percier and Fontaine, redeveloped the rooms in order to accommodate collections that had become fabulously rich. Hubert Roberl, The Long Cdlay of the Louvre. c, 1794-1796. Hubert Robert. Proposed Development of the Rotunda of Mars, c, 1797-1800.